Jon Rombach is a writer and river guide headquartered in Oregon's Wallowa Valley. His newspaper column, 'And Furthermore,' appears in the Wallowa County Chieftain. The Gearboat Chronicles cover life on the river, updated every week at windingwatersrafting.com. Publications include Utne Reader, Backpacker, Sports Afield, Mother Earth News and other fine, upstanding journals you may or may not have ever heard of.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Happy trails, 1997 Toyota Tacoma Xtra Cab with a V6 5 spd that served me well. We've traveled many miles, you and I.

Remember when you saved my life down in Algodones when I whistled for you like Night Rider and you raced in there and whisked me from the clutches of the gang that was trying to abduct me? Good times, my friend.

Yeah, well, I sold you.

A braced pair. A stable. A quiver. A small fleet.

The T100 has more payload. Sorry. I'm all about the payload these days. We've grown apart, Tacoma. No hard feelings.

For what it's worth, I miss your smile. And your better gas mileage. This T100 is really sucking it down. It's ridiculous.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

You can’t hear
much when you’re standing in a stream with water moving around you. If you’re
preoccupied with landing a fish on a fly rod there’s no reason to listen for,
or expect, two guys in Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife uniforms to
walk up behind you in the river. I was one of the ODF&W guys and my
coworker and I just happened to come around the corner to see this fisherman
land a small trout, hold it up to consider the size, then shrug his shoulders
and decide to keep this one.

The timing was
amazing. The odds were long that we would happen to arrive right there, right
then, to surprise this guy right when he was catching a fish. But there we
were. The fisherman turned to reach for his creel hanging behind him and that’s
when he saw us coming down the river. His expression was the same as a
five-year-old with permission to get a cookie from the jar, but gets caught in
the act by a grownup who doesn’t know this cookie has been OK’d.

“How’s the
fishing?” my co-worker asked in his big booming voice.

The fisherman was
holding his catch but really didn’t want to be, so it was interesting to watch
his reaction. The fish was legal, by a couple inches, and the guy wasn’t doing
anything wrong, but he still held the fish like a stolen cookie.

We were doing a
spawning ground survey on the Wenaha, making our way downstream to Troy. Not
out there doing any enforcement of fishing regulations. This was research. So
we shot the breeze a little bit with the fisherman and he looked very relieved
when we wished him good luck and started to wade on down the river.

“Oh, one more
thing,” my co-worker said, turning back to the fisherman. “You got your license
on you?”

It was perfect
delivery of the Columbo technique, the Peter Falk TV detective who throws in an
afterthought question that gets right down to it. The fisherman patted his
pockets furiously, putting on a very unconvincing show of being surprised to
not find his license. “I must have left it back at camp,” he said.

Which was true. My
coworker Bill Knox followed up later and the man did have a valid license. That
trip was the first time I got to know Bill and I always loved that Columbo move
on the river. He wasn’t being a hard case, just doing his job. But doing it
with style and a friendly authority. With his baritone voice he couldn’t help
but give off a sense of authority. I found that difficult to get around later
when playing poker at a table with Bill. It’s hard to read a bluff when it’s
delivered over what sounds like a PA system with the bass turned up.

Later, when I
worked at the radio, I never had to worry about the microphone picking up Knox
singing when we broadcast the Yellah Dog Blues Band. And I could always tell
when the open mic at Terminal Gravity started because I could hear Bill’s voice
carry from down the street. He wasn’t overpowering when he was singing. I never
got the impression he was trying to boom it out beyond his normal delivery. He
just had that genuine, strong voice and presence that was impossible to miss.

Until now. News of
Bill’s death has me patting my pockets like that bad actor of a fisherman,
looking for a way out of a bad situation that I know isn’t there. That big
voice of his being gone also carries. There are many outstanding things to
remember about Bill Knox and many people missing him. He was just a great guy.
I don’t know why I keep focusing on Bill’s voice, except that he and that voice
of his were both unforgettable once you got to know them. Unique. Solid. A
pleasure to be around.

Awww...thanks, Wallowa County

Next year, I'm going for best cheeseburger.

'And Furthermore' column

Gearboat Chronicles

I worked for years as a radio announcer and dj inside a small, soundproof room. Loved radio, but talking at that microphone in the teeny-tiny booth finally brought on the stir crazies. Shifting to newspaper reporter brought on the just crazies. I needed some outdoors and river guiding in Hells Canyon certainly took care of that. The Gearboat Chronicles are dispatches from the river, updated every Monday. Click that picture up there to connect with the Winding Waters River Expeditions site.

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'Compost Apprentice' in 'Readings for Writers'

It's awfully nice to be in a table of contents with the likes of Ed Abbey, Maya Angelou, Mike Royko, Dave Barry and Malcolm X. My favorite discussion question: "How does Rombach deal with situations that call for four-letter words?" Answer: Usually, he uses them.

'Number 98: Eulogy for a Red Bus'

Reports of the demise of Glacier's red buses were greatly exaggerated. By me. I drove one in college, then wrote this when the fleet was being retired. Ford stepped in, the buses got overhauls and they're still on the road.

The Sasquatch In Us All

Sports Afield

Nice things people say

Moonshine Ink should be spilled on every community. This independent monthly is published by Mayumi Elegado and her band of freedom fighters in Truckee, CA. See for yourself at moonshineink.com.

I moved some words around for them a while back, and Mayumi slipped this in an issue:

"Copy editor Jon Rombach is adept and freaking funny. In one of his recent emails, he had this to say about chopping up copy: '...added the new ones and took a machete to the previous ones. It's at 620 words. I can amputate something else to get to 550 but they might begin reading like fortune cookies...this 'asap' hasn't been very 's' – but I've been attacked by a string of people who interpret ‘busy’ and ‘no-time-right-now’ as their cue to tell a long yarn about how other people interrupt them when they're trying to get [stuff] done. I'm now cloistered in a dark remove, and will push ahead.'"________Former Chieftain editor Michael Burkett may or may not cheat at Scrabble. I'm not saying he does. The following is from his farewell Chieftain column:

"...I'm going to miss being the first human being on the planet to read the latest column by Jon Rombach. Lest you've somehow failed to notice, this local fellow is a national-level talent. By the way, if you're a fan of easy money, challenge Jon to a game of Scrabble. Even if you've lost half your brain in a tragic...."